Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Monday, January 2, 2017

Mikio Naruse | 乱れる Midareru (Yearning)

Having
now seen my third Mikio Naruse film, I beginning to think that, although his
subjects and themes are limited, he may be a better director than those of his
generation, Ozu and Mizoguchi—not that ranking such three great filmmakers much
matters. All three deal with trapped, yet forceful women, although Ozu’s
heroines more often find solace in the family. But there is a kind feminist
strength in Naruse’s characters that makes them far more complex and
interesting, leaving us, at film’s end, to want to still know them better.

Not that the hard-working widow, Reiko
Morita (Hideko Takamine), would allow herself to imagine that she is a feminist
or even that she lives a complex life. For her, survival is a necessary thing,
and working in a small mom and pop grocery store for 8 years after her
husband’s death is simply something that she sees as her responsibility.
Besides, her mother-in-law is now quite elderly, and that woman’s two older
daughters have husbands and jobs of their own. And who else would care for her
husband’s younger brotherKoji (Yūzō
Kayama), who, although he has gone to college and worked for a short period at
a job, is now a troublesome loafer, who prefers to drink and gamble, now and again
getting into fights? Reiko treats the young man as a mother might, lying for
him and cooking late meals when he arrives home, sometimes after midnight. The
one thing he seems to most enjoy is to eat, and we see the handsome boy several
times in this film, shoveling in whatever Reiko serves him.

Yet Reiko, from the very beginning of
this film, begins to sense that something is in the wind, that despite her
dedication to family and the traditions of the past, something is beggining to
dreadfully change. First of all, a new supermarket has opened up in her part
town, and, as an advertising truck announces time and again, its prices are
much lower than the older, smaller grocers. Consequently, she and other small
store owners have begun to lose customers. One local shop owner, foreseeing
financial collapse, commits suicide.

Koji and his sisters, however, see what’s
coming clearer than Reiko, and Koji becomes determined to turn his small shop
into a larger supermarket. Although Reiko has been unbelievably
loyal to the family, the two sisters do not wish to have her to be one of the
corporate heads, while Koji feels to do would be only just. Naruse demonstrates
their lack of feeling through hundreds of tiny gestures, a flip of the hand or
a turn of a head, as they attempt to convince their mother that it is time for
Reiko to remarry and move on.

Fortunately Reiko is unaware of their
hostility and Koji’s plans, and feels it’s still her duty to remain and keep
the store going as long as she can. When Koji finally does tell her about
selling the shop he also tells her another secret that finally forces her hand:
he has left his job because he did not want to leave her since he is and always
has been in love.

That confession alters the very atmosphere
of the shop, as the two, Reiko and Koji circle in avoidance of one another. The
only way to end the potent push and pull between them is for Reiko to go, and
she suddenly determines to return to her original family home in another city.

Many a Naruse film would end there, but
this time he appears ready to take us into that new complexity of character, as
Koji follows her, and the two are drawn closer and closer together as the train
moves forward into space; indeed there is a kind of lightness here as the two
gradually move closer and closer one another, and at one stop, where Koji
leaves the train to eat, Reiko signals him to quickly return before the train
leaves the station. Perhaps these two he

might imagine can actually find a
way to break with customs relating to their age difference and family internal
relationships. Before they arrive ather hometown, Reiko evensuggests that
they spend the night in a small mountain
town.

Here the air is almost white with a thick
fog, intimating that she will be unable to see her way clear. Once more she
tells Koji that his love cannot be returned, offering him, like a child, a ring
made of string.

Like so many nights in the past, Koji
finds his way to a bar. Upon awakening the next morning Reiko watches from her
window men carrying a dead body they have discovered under a cliff. Observing
the ring of string on the man’s figure, Reiko pulls back in horror much like
Brecht’s Mother Courage, in the realization that her lack of ability to change
and speak her heart has been responsible, in part, for Koji’s death.